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To begin with, I must make it clear that I consider this trial to be yet another theater of war, and the present political statement—because this is a political statement and not an apologia—is yet another act of enmity stemming from the camp of revolutionary forces. I have already taken responsibility for membership in the Fire Cells Conspiracy Revolutionary Organization. Therefore, as a proud member of the Fire Cells Conspiracy, but also as a revolutionary and an anarchist, I view the occasion for my “apologia” as a forum in which to spread revolutionary discourse and explain my political positions regarding revolutionary war.

I would first like to talk about the institution of justice: from feudal regimes, in which justice was personified by an absolute monarch who possessed legislative as well as executive and judicial power, to the modern Western capitalist states, which upon adopting the separation of powers devised by Montesquieu subsequently divided up those three aspects of domination and made them independent. The institution of justice, as repository and executor of the law, represents one of the fundamental pillars of domination as well as one more institution of unfettered exploitation and oppression.

Different activist factions now compete for a monopoly on the Occupy brand like vultures and hyenas fighting over a rotting carcass. Each tries to outdo the other with their facile demonization of assorted miscreants. The combined message is that anyone -- regardless of political self-identification -- who dresses in black and has pale skin is now a legitimate target; not just for suspicion, but for active denunciation to the police if not physical assault by reactionary vigilantes. The true political nature and class loyalty of these squawkers has never been more clear.

As we mark the anniversary of OPD's gratuitously brutal clearing of the Plaza, it's obvious that the demoralizing effects of state repression have taken their toll on everyone involved in Occupy Oakland. Long-established left-liberals and their newbie acolytes, who merely paid lip service to the more radical aspects of the reclamation of public space, have reverted to their instinctive position: polite pseudo-opposition, which means first and foremost a respect for capitalism and those who protect it. How else are these self-described progressives to make themselves known as politically legitimate actors, worthy of acknowledgement and recognition by powerbrokers looking for the next generation of the managers of revolt? DOOM and the OO Media Committee have finally made their true intentions obvious: to drive an irreversible wedge between pro- and anti-capitalists, between good and bad protesters, between politicians and those who understand they can only represent themselves.

I wrote the following essay for the anthology We Are Many: Reflections on Movement Strategy from Occupation to Liberation (AK Press, 2012), edited by Kate Khatib, Margaret Killjoy, and Mike McGuire, and encourage you to pick up a copy of this hefty collection for the approximately fifty contributions, including insightful pieces by many good comrades. I’m particularly excited to share the pages with some of my friends: Josh MacPhee, Ryan Harvey, Andy Cornell, Chris Dixon, Koala Largess, George Caffentzis, and Team Colors! Thanks to Kate and Mike for giving me permission to release my essay into the world so soon into this book’s printed life, since they, like me, see all the essays as tools/weapons in the struggle for freedom.

I hope my partial, open-ended, experimental musings shake up your thinking a bit and maybe make you smile, shed a tear, get angry, and/or recall Occupy from angles you’d forgotten. More to the point, I wrote this piece as inward self-reflection to shake up my own thinking about this past year, but also to spark dialogue and debate, among anarchists especially, about our relation to, role in, mistakes and possible achievements within the occupy movement/moment. Dig in, share, engage with it, make up your own prehistory or future (im)perfects.

Looks like on the eve of the election there’s going to one hell of a party on Wall Street, one on Capitol Hill and hundreds more in front of banks and other prime locations all over the land.

“We all just need a good night off, to relax and have fun.”

Invite your friends, invite your enemies … bring back the spirit of all Hallows’ Eve by honoring the dead and giving those on Wall Street, Capitol Hill and our fr-enemies at the big banks … A GOOD SPOOK!

It would be fitting for the last action of Occupy Oakland to be a return to Oscar Grant Plaza and the planting of one tent. But the slogan on the side of the tent should mourn our dead friends and Occupy Oakland itself.

Movements come into existence and then recede or end. Somewhere in the U.S. there is undoubtedly an outpost of the Temperance Society, which was a world-wide movement for over a century, but is now meaningless . When a movement or organization doesn’t recognize that it has reached its endpoint, it becomes as welcome as a rotting corpse. Smell one once and you would know what we mean.

The evidence of the end of Occupy Oakland is not this proclamation; others have already pronounced it dead before now. The evidence is that the real work of Occupy Oakland continues in spite of the public spectacle. The housing organizing, the labor solidarity group, the anti-repression group and others can no longer pretend to be under the control or direction of the General Assembly, because that body doesn’t exist as a place where serious discussion or, more importantly, decision-making can occur.

A year ago, when Occupy Oakland began, it seemed like the beginnings of a new grassroots political movement, uniting social, economic and institutional justice movements under one banner.

Twelve months later - on the anniversary of the Oct. 25, 2011, police raid on Occupy’s downtown encampment - the movement has become a mucked-up mess, smeared by in-fighting and finger-pointing, which has overshadowed its larger goals.

In the past few weeks, several Occupy-affiliated factions have issued pointed communiqués through various websites and blogs, both official and unofficial. Instead of focusing their energies on targeting an unjust system, what we’ve been seeing is — cue the banjoes — dueling propaganda aimed at internal divisions within the movement itself. The irony is so thick, you could cut it with a knife.

On Oct. 9, Oakland rapper Boots Riley, one of OO’s more visible faces, wrote a Facebook post denouncing vandalism, which was widely circulated through the blogosphere. Riley stated, “The use of the blac bloc tactic in all situations is not useful. As a matter of fact, in situations such as the one we have in Oakland, its repeated use has become counter-revolutionary.”

Michael Moore’s latest documentary is a critique of capitalism- in mainstream theaters- pretty big deal. “Capitalism: A Love Story” starts off comparing the US to the Roman Empire- a fairly easy task. In addition to other commentary, the documentary seems to be focused on the anti-capitalist stance of various Catholic priests, the consequences of the housing crisis, corporate bailouts and, finally, some alternatives in the form of worker-run factories.

Transfeminism developed out of a critique of the mainstream and radical feminist movements. The feminist movement has a history of internal hierarchies. There are many examples of women of color, working class women, lesbians and others speaking out against the tendency of the white, affluent- dominated women’s movement to silence them and overlook their needs. Instead of honoring these marginalized voices, the mainstream feminist movement has prioritized struggling for rights primarily in the interests of white affluent women.

My coat was born in the Lebow Clothing Factory in 1985, shortly before the owner closed it down, firing several hundred seamstresses and quietly knocking away one of the last bastions of manufacturing that stood in the way of Baltimore's inevitable transformation into a post-industrial wasteland. The factory was closed, locked, and boarded up, and no one bothered to remove anything from inside. Endless rows of sewing machines sat rusting, great hay-bale sized rolls of textile lay collecting dust, and this coat, along with twelve thousand of its brethren, hung neatly wrapped in plastic, unseen and forgotten. Like the women who made it, it became redundant, unwanted, a discarded relic of a dying era...